Little Lina
by Black Waltz 0
Summary: Agent Formaldehyde returns late one night from work to attend to his little daughter.


**Little Lina**

**By Black Waltz 0**

Agent Formaldehyde closed the front door gently as he let himself inside. His internal clock told him it was about four AM by now, but thankfully he had taken the time to get his vitalus sorted out while he was still deployed at the Black Hoods Whitevale base, even though it was a cold and numbing locale and anyway, Yasty tended to worry when he stayed out late and didn't call; even if it was classified work.

He sighed as he took mental inventory of his various aches and pains, then found the time to grimace and pry the growling chompacabra off his leg, leaning down long enough to wrench it free and then snap its spine between his hands. He deposited the small body in the empty wastepaper basket close by, telling himself that he'd dispose of it in the morning.

The moment he swung the door open the mordesh quickly recognized the sound of weak, persistent, almost rhythmical muffled crying. His gaze automatically fell to the hallway as the sound increased in volume, not surprising considering he hadn't bothered to mask the telltale sounds of his own return. Yasty had highly sensitive ears and she could likely hear his slow, listless heartbeat from almost a living room away. Probably.

Yasty soon ambled in as predicted, garbed in her faded, almost blue striped pajamas with hair and tail all mussy, unkempt and almost flattened on one side, as if she had been lying in bed for hours and weeping steadily, judging by the drying streaks on her face. Clasped within her arms she held a bundle wrapped in a small, soft blanket.

"Oh, Maldy," she said in a tired voice, her ears drooping as she rocked slightly to stay on her feet, "I'm sorry. I can't get her to quiet. I've tried everything."

He approached her, unconcerned by the noise that she thought must have been incredibly irritating to him, but in all honesty it didn't bother him at all. Well, the volume part at least. "Is that Lina?" He asked of her gently, reaching his big hands forward to overlap them against Yasty's own.

She nodded in a defeated manner. Of all her children her second eldest daughter, Galina Silverbush, was something of an anomaly. The other baby kittens were for the most part content to sleep at night and limited their frequent crying outbursts to understandable times and for sensible reasons, because they were hungry or tired or poopy, or what have you (especially little Arbert and Hunny who were as peaceful as rowsdower lambs), but Galina… she tended to scream. A lot. And for no real reason the young, weary mother could ever properly determine.

Yasty began to tear up again. "She hates me." She told him, her throat tightening at the thought. "It's gotta be the reason why… why she does this."

Agent Formaldehyde made sort of a tsking noise with his mouth and met barely any resistance when he pulled the squalling bundle out of her arms. It was almost laughable how small it was compared to his wide palms and long digits – in fact it wouldn't have been very difficult to wrap a single hand around her like she was a burrito or something, but the mordesh handled her as though she were a priceless treasure made of glass. He used both hands and fingertips only to coax her into his grip, just to be safe. When he was done he leaned down and pressed a kiss against the top of his lover's head, between the ears. "Return to your room and rest." He murmured in also a whisper, close enough to those long floppy appendages that she would have no trouble hearing him. "I'll look after little Lina, so stay with the others and sleep. Are they alright?"

The aurin scientist (who was currently on leave) preferred to inspect his belt buckle rather than look up into his gaunt but likely calm face. "Yeah, they're good. Well, Zajka and Martina were fussing earlier but they're alright now. Maldy?" She asked.

"Yes, Yasty?"

She wrapped her arms around his waist in the best kind of hug she could give without him kneeling down for her benefit, or her standing on a box or something. His uniform was a little dirty and suspiciously spattered with blood, though dry, but he seemed mostly hale so she didn't ask. It wasn't her concern right now anyway. "Don't stay up much later, okay? And don't let her get cold. I love you."

He stroked her silver hair with his free hand and smiled. "And I you, of course. Sleep soundly."

Agent Formaldehyde waited for Yasty to teeter out of the room and back up the stairs to their bedroom where the rest of her litter would be waiting for their mother. The children, of course being aurin were not of his blood, and he towered over his little family by many feet and gangly, alien limbs to them, but… their mother had once been quite happy to call him 'lover', and maintained that one day when they could speak her children would someday recognize him as 'father'. He was both excited and anxious for that day to arrive.

For now, however, the silver-haired mordesh retraced his steps with the bleating infant cradled in the crook of one arm, taking small Galina out of Yasty's earshot so she could find some peace. He passed through the front door again and stepped back out into the night, illuminated only by the stars and moon, and the few porch lights affixed outside to attract moths and brighten the way.

It wasn't as cold as Yasty probably assumed it was outside but Formaldehyde kept his daughter wrapped up tight as he ascended the stairs to reach the second floor balcony overlooking the rest of his skyplot, only unraveling her from her soft blankie when he reached his usual spot to stand outside in the darkness, hand upon the rail, for ample quiet contemplation of the full Nexian moon.

Unlike human infants, or even mordesh infants when there was once such a thing, aurin babies were smaller yet more developed, with a little extra movement and mobility. They could cling like very small and snuggly razortails. Galina was too tiny to climb and her little purple tail no bigger or longer than a long strand of angel-soft hair wasn't strong enough yet to do anything but curl gently around one of his fingers, but Agent Formaldehyde cupped the fragile creature in his hands as she sobbed and lifted her to eye level as if for inspection. The new, pure creature fresh into the world quit crying and opened her teary eyes long enough to goggle at the old, diseased and decaying thing that still loved her.

He grinned at her, an expression that would have otherwise taken Yasty a lot of wheedling and most of an evening to coax from him. In retrospect it might not have been the best idea to show the bright, scary teeth and sallow cheek of a monster to what was essentially almost still a newborn, but, and he would never mention this to Yasty or anyone else, of their six children conceived through IVF Galina Vera Silverbush might have been his favorite. She cried a lot, yes, and often she would drive her parents a little mad, but…

Yasty had told him once, in her workshop while she tinkered and modified her 'Sprout' series of long range scanbots that she almost disliked how he could calm Galina's wailing with seemingly no effort at all. Maybe she resented how her own daughter could play favorites too even though she couldn't walk or speak yet, or maybe it was more because the favorite she had chosen hadn't turned out to be her.

In any case, every time when Galina bawled dealing with that had become Papa's job now. Fat little tears rolled down her chubby, dusky cheeks and she uttered a short cough as he held her in his hand, a miniscule rattle that echoed through the cavity of his child's chest as he held her. It sounded familiar somehow, well, it had been over a hundred years ago, and from a different race, but still.

Agent Formaldehyde shifted the clingy aurin infant to his shoulder where she found a good grip on his Black Hoods uniform, her barely-formed claws gaining purchase in the outline of the skull motif as he brought his wrist up and punched in some search queries onto the mounted computer on his wrist. It was meant to be for information in a pinch while out in the field, but whatever. He'd hung his hood up for the night by now.

Galina coughed again on his shoulder-pad, but she'd quieted down somewhat since being placed there, which was a relief because her little squeaker was kind of close to Formaldehyde's pointed ears. The tears hadn't stopped yet, but she peered down from her perch at the ground with wide, sparkling purple eyes. The stalker smiled a bit as he glanced sideways to check on her. She seemed to love heights, something Yasty hadn't thought of yet to provide. And she thought it was favoritism! He had already been tempted into keeping such a secret for himself.

Soon he found what he'd been guessing about and gently lifted his daughter off his armor and back into his arms again. Her tiny hands caught on the metal where her claws hooked for purchase, but it didn't take much coaxing to pull her up again like the kitten that she was. The removal upset her and she started to scream again, punctuated once more by the rattling cough that Yasty may have overlooked by its rarity and her tiredness. What did they call it here? Croup? It went by a different name on his homeworld of Grismara, but the mordesh reckoned it must have been close enough.

For the first time in… hm, it must have been decades by then, Agent Formaldehyde fell out of his habit of speaking in Galactic Standard and lapsed back into the modern, yet dead dialect of _mordescu_, almost whispering under his breath as he pulled out an adrenaline-based medishot from his uniform and cracked it open in his free hand.

_"Will you watch the waning skies?  
>will you wait for the setting sun?<br>papa prays for a sleepy smile  
>while mama minds our little one."<em>

It was a low, droning, almost melancholy hum in the deep, deep voice that Yasty had come to love. He poured a scant amount of the medicinal concoction onto the finger of his glove and held the pungent aroma of the adrenaline-faerybloom mixture under Galina's nose.

Her small face crinkled up further at the bitter smell but after a bit of time her airways seemed to relax and her tight, bleating cries seemed to loosen up a bit. Finally, after what must have been hours and hours for his lover mired in exhaustion somewhere beneath his boots, the purple-haired infant ceased her crying.

"You were only frightened because you couldn't breathe correctly." Formaldehyde said to the child, talking to her gently in a manner he would have thought he was no longer capable of anymore. He capped the medicine once he was done and stowed it away again, then lifted her high up into the air over his head, holding her with both hands.

He smiled again as her eyes boggled in wonder and her long floppy ears perked up to scout for sounds already, her tail wrapping around his wrist like a bracelet for extra support. She was probably going to make a good lookout someday, or an explorer, or anything that could put her cooing, gurgling joy of heights into good use. He knew he'd have to bring her back in soon and wrap her up tight so when the vapor treatment wore off they could treat the croup a little more seriously, but for now…

"Light little 'Lina." He grinned. "Always adorable."

And then he put his stalker skills to use one last time that night and expertly sidestepped the jet of puke that was flung his way, without worry.

_-fin_


End file.
